Leading through affiliation: the effect of humor type and gender on likelihood of being perceived as a leader

Humor can be a powerful tool for increasing one’s status in a group and influencing others. Given that past research has indicated that the use of humor by a woman might harm her potential of advancing in the workplace, we examine the joint effect of humor style and gender on the likelihood of being perceived as a leader. Using a within-subjects vignette experiment, we collected data from 148 participants, with 73% being female, and an average age of 33.2 years old (SD = 9.8). We found that people using affiliative humor had a higher perceived chance of emerging as leaders compared to those using aggressive humor and gender itself did not have a significant effect on leadership emergence. Contrary to our expectations, the affiliative-aggressive humor discrepancy in leadership emergence was higher for men rather than women. These results are aligned with expectancy violation hypothesis pointing to a distinctiveness effect of incongruent role behaviors such that men tend to receive more credit for affiliative humor, while women tend to be penalized less for using aggressive humor in groups. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.